"You're getting thin; you find success in art
Is not a thing so easy as you fancied.
Five years you've worked at what you modestly
Esteem your specialty. Your specialty!
As if a woman could have more than one,—
And that—maternity! I do not speak
Of the six years you gave your art before
You strove to make it pay. Methinks you see
Your efforts are a failure. What's the end
Of all your toil? Not enough money saved
For the redemption of your pawned piano!
Truly a cheerful prospect is before you:
To hear your views would edify me greatly."
"Yes, I am thinner than I was; but then
I can afford to be—so that's not much.
As for success—if we must measure that
By the financial rule, 'tis small, I grant you.
Yes, I have toiled, and lived laborious days,
And little can I show in evidence;
And sometimes—sometimes, I am sick at heart,
And almost lose my faith in woman's power
To paint a rose, or even to mend a stocking,
As well as man can do. What would you have?"
"Now you speak reason. Let me see you act it!
Abandon this wild frenzy of the hour,
That would leave woman free to go all ways
A man may go! Why, look you, even in art,
Most epicene of all pursuits in life,
How man leaves woman always far behind!
Give up your foolish striving; and let Nature
And the world's order have their way with you."
"Small as the pittance is, yet I could earn
More, ten times, by my brush than by my needle."
"Ah! woman's sphere is that of the affections.
Ambition spoils her—spoils her as a woman."
"Spoils her for whom?"
"Then woman's errand
Is not, like man's, self-culture, self-advancement,
But she must simply qualify herself
To be a mate for man: no obligation
Resting on man to qualify himself
To be a mate for woman?"
"Ay, the man
Lives in the intellect; the woman's life
Is that of the affections, the emotions;
And her anatomy is proof of it."
"So have I often heard, but do not see.
Some women have I known, who could endure
Surgical scenes which many a strong man
Would faint at. We have had this dubious talk
Of woman's sphere far back as history goes:
'Tis time now it were proved: let actions prove it;
Let free experience, education prove it!
Why is it that the vilest drudgeries
Are put on woman, if her sphere be that
Of the affections only, the emotions?
He represents the intellect, and she
The affections only! Is it always so?
Let Malibran, or Mary Somerville,
De Staël, Browning, Stanton, Stowe, Bonheur,
Stand forth as proof of that cool platitude.
Use other arguments, if me you'd move.
Besides, I see not that your system makes
Any provision for that numerous class
To whom the affections are an Eden closed,—
The women who are single and compelled
To drudge for a precarious livelihood!
What of their sphere? What of the sphere of those
Who do not, by the sewing of a shirt,
Earn a meal's cost? Go tell them, when they venture
On an employment social custom makes
Peculiarly a man's,—that they become
Unwomanly! Go make them smile at that,—
Smile if they've not forgotten how to smile."